Matthew Johnson

Research Interests

The goal of my research is to understand the fundamental laws of nature through their impact on cosmology. I am primarily a theorist, dabbling in cosmology, field theory, string theory, and gravitation. I also design data analysis algorithms to confront fundamental theory with observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation. Here is a sampling of questions that my research aims to answer: How big is the universe? What might lie beyond our observable universe, and how could we confirm or disprove various proposals? What role do the extra dimensions predicted by string theory play in cosmology? Are there new ways of looking at cosmological datasets that could be useful when confronting theories with data? Can computer simulations of the very early universe shed light on it's possible initial conditions and evolution?